Correspondence/Japan's First-Graders; Learning to Love School in the Summer: There's Cleanup. And All That Recess.

Published: August 16, 1998

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Likewise, the notion that Japanese schools stifle creativity took a blow when I saw that all the children learn to play the piano. Music and art are a much more important part of the curriculum in Japan than in the United States, and they are one facet of creative expression. Moreover, the math teaching used story problems and other methods to drive home the principles of what they were learning. Instead of simply doing addition drills, for example, Miss Ikeda would call out a number, and the children would have to shout out how many more would equal ten. So if she called out six, the class was supposed to answer with a chorus of ''four.''

In the end, my impression of Japanese elementary school was excellent. There was far more teaching of math and of reading and writing than would be the case in most American schools -- Gregory now reads better in Japanese than in English -- and it seemed that this was in part a function of Japan simply taking primary education more seriously than America does.

For one thing, although Americans view themselves as modernists, it is the United States that sticks with an anachronism like a school year based on an agricultural society, in which children take off for the summer to help with farmwork. Until recently Japan was an agricultural country, but it saw its future in education rather than fieldwork, and so children go to school in the summer. They do have a month-long summer vacation, but during that time they must write a daily journal and do other homework. The result is that fall does not need to be spent repeating what was taught the previous spring.

In addition, teachers in Japan are first rate, are paid excellent wages and enjoy high prestige. Moreover, Japanese children benefit from the gender discrimination that Japanese women suffer: It is difficult for the smartest women to become doctors or lawyers in Japan, so while brilliant American women become brain surgeons or university professors, brilliant Japanese women often become elementary school teachers.

Year-round school and first-rate teachers are expensive, of course, but Japan views those as essentials and cuts corners in other areas. Aside from the lack of cafeterias and janitors, there is no air conditioning and buildings are old and rudimentary. Moreover, classes are large -- nearly 40 pupils in Gregory's first grade class -- and they function only because so much of the responsibility is assigned to the students themselves. Gregory's Japanese is fluent but not native level, and so when he did not understand something, a boy named Kubori-kun was detailed to explain it to him, the idea being that this would help both of them.

ALL this school sounds as if it would be all work and no play, and indeed the average child in Asia has had one to two more years in a classroom by the time he or she enters junior high than the average American child. But the saving grace was a boisterous emphasis on fun in the classroom. Kids were always shouting and clowning around, with none of the discipline that people assume is drilled into them, and the student-teacher ratio was so large that the classroom was mostly on the lip of chaos. That had disadvantages, of course, but it seemed to mean lots of fun for the children.

Then, too, there was recess -- lots of it -- and most of the children seemed to enjoy the recess with their friends so much that they were willing to put up with the additional classroom time.

So Gregory had a great time. In the end he prefers his international school, because he feels more natural studying in English, but he said that despite the long hours most of the pupils had more fun in the Japanese school.

Why?

''The recess,'' Gregory explained. ''There's lots of recess. And that's the best thing about school.''